Portable Firefox and Portable Thunderbird are packages made specifically for running Firefox and Thunderbird from a removable storage device. They even have extension support.
I haven’t actually tried these, but they seem perfect for students whose universities don’t have Firefox or Thunderbird on lab machines. Students could run the packages from a USB drive or their allotted account space.
[ via Neil ]
I’ve been doing just this with a usb thumb drive very successfully. My university has however blocked access to my isp’s mail servers so thunderbird is a no go, although I’ve left it there for easy access to email while travelling.
I use Firefox .10 PR at work from my USB drive and it works like a dream! I don’t have all the plugins loaded (flash yes quicktime no.) I use it everyday at work. (I work for the state government and cannot load any software). Definately give it a try. You will not regret it.
Tristan Nitot, founder of Mozilla Europe once wrote about “Paf la Cle USB” (Bang! the USB drive).
The principle is simple: always take a USB drive with Firefox fully installed on it, and if you need to make a demo, you just have to plug the drive and show how firefox works without installing anything on your friend’s PC. Sometimes people are reluctant to let somebody playing with their PC.
http://standblog.org/blog/2004/01/07/93113258-paf-la-cle-usb-bis
I used this awhile back, with version .8 of firefox. It was alright, seemed a little slow, might be my USB drive though. Maybe I’ll give it another shot with 1.0 PR